www.helsinki.fi/yliopisto estimating gross domestic product (gdp) of 289 nuts regions in europe with...

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Estimating gross domestic product (GDP) of 289 NUTS regions in Europe with subjective

indicators for human and social capital

22.04.23The Department of Geosciences and Geography, Division of Urban

Geography and Regional Studies/ Mikko Weckroth

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Outline1. Aim of the study – what, why and how

2. Economy, happiness and causality

3. Method and data

4. Social well-being as social capital

5. Personal well-being as human capital

6. Descriptive statistics

7. Scatter plots

8. Regression models

9. Interaction terms

10. Conclusions

11 Discussion and future research

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Aim of the study

Spatial interdepence between economic well-being (GDP) and personal and social well-being (SWB)

Life satisfaction masks important information on the relationship between the objective and subjective well-being

Focus on ”functioning and flourishing” measures in SWB instead of life evaluations

Multidisciplinarity approach instead of spatial econometric analysis

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Economy, happiness and causality ?

- The link between happiness and wealth ?

- SWB studies as growth critique

- Regional studies have focused only on life satisfaction

- Three traditions in SWB research

(1) life evaluations account (evaluative measures),

(2) the hedonistic account (affect measures)

(3) the eudaimonic account (flourishing and functioning measures)

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Osasto / Henkilön nimi / Esityksen nimi 5

GDP

SWBLife satisfaction

SWBFlourishing and functioning measures


Method and data- European Social Survey and Eurostat data

- ESS 2012 includes module on functioning measures of SWB (14 items on social and personal wellbeing each )

- Control variables from Eurostat: employment rate, density, education level, governance Index, and R&D expenditure

- GDP = control variables + social capital + human capital (+ adjustments for spatial autocorrelation of NUTS)

- 37 956 individuals nested in 297 NUTS in 24 countries

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Social well-being as social capital

- Briding and bonding social capital

- Social capital and economic outcomes ?

- Social capital in ESS:

- `Social trust´

- `Reciprocity´

- `Local regognition´

- `Social contact and support´

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8Osasto / Henkilön nimi / Esityksen nimi

Rotated Factor Loadings

Local Social contact

Item Social trust Reciprocity recognition and supportMost people can be trusted, or that you can´t be too carefull in dealing with people

,757

Most people would try to take advantage of you if they got a chance, or they would try to be fair

,754

Most of the time people try to be helpful or that they are or they are mostly looking out for themselves ,656

To what extent do you receive help and support from people you are close to when you need it

,753

To what extent do you provide help and support to people you are close to when they need it

,662

To what extent do you feel appreciated by people you are close to

,563

How much of a time during the past week you felt lonely -,281 -,224

To what extent you feel that people in your local area help one another

,839

To what extent you feel close to the people in local area -,491

To what extent you feel people treat you with respect ,343 ,479

Compared to other people of your age, how often would you say you take part in social activities

,613

How often do you socially meet with friends, relatives or colleagues

,579

How many people, if any, are there with whom you can discuss intimate and personal matters

,434

In past 12 months, how often did you get Involved in work for voluntary or charitable organisations -,302


Personal well-being as human capital

- Education based human capital (Gleaser) vs. creativity based (Florida)

- Indivual asset treated as common good

- Human capital in ESS:

- `Engagement´

- `Compentence and meaning´

- `Resilience´

- `Autonomy and control´

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Rotated Factor Loadings Competence Autonomy

Item Engagement and meaning Resilience and controlHow much of the time would you generally say you are absorbed in what you are doing

,858 ,201

How much of the time would you generally say you are enthusiastic about what you are doing ,765 ,260 ,230

How much of the time would you generally say you are interested in what you are doing

,752 ,252 ,218 ,224

I generally feel that what I do in life is valueable and worthwhile

-,204 -,670

Most days I feel a sense of accomplishment from what I do

-,200 -,528 -,211 -,230

There are lots of things I feel I am good at -,493 I feel that I am free to decide how to live my life -,344 -,315

To what extent do you feel that you have a sense of direction in your life

,300 ,339 ,312 ,332

To what extent do you make time to do things you really want to do

,234 ,454

When things go wrong in my life it generally takes me a long time to get back to normal

,623

How difficult or easy do you find it to deal with importantproblems that come up in your life? ,475 ,296

In my daily life I get a very little chance to show how capable I am

,368

How much of the time during the past week you had lot of energy

,270 ,326

To what extent you learn new things in life ,255 ,308 ,322


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Descriptive Statistics

Mean Std. Dev. Min Max NRegional GDP 22941 14295 2600 72600 289GDP log 4,2513 0,342 3,41 4,86 289Human capital Engagement -,03 ,278 -1,051 ,706 289Competence and meaning ,01 ,226 -1,026 ,644 289Resilience ,02 ,232 -,750 ,521 289Autonomy and control ,00 ,161 -,530 ,385 289Social Capital Social trust ,00 ,421 -1,584 ,792 289Reciprocity ,05 ,234 -,787 ,671 289Local recognition ,02 ,224 -,576 ,778 289Social contact and support ,02 ,281 -,734 ,614 289Control variables Population density 252,5 679,7 1 7131 289Tertiary educated (% of total population)

26,53 8,65 9,9 55,7 272

RD expenditure 448,8 490,2 4 2962 282EQI index ,170 1,021 -2,48 1,90 282Employment rate 64,2 7,7 39,4 81,8 272Valid N (listwise) 258


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Unadjusted regression estimates

OLS OLS Spatial filtering

Constant 2.878*** 2.589 ***Human capital Engagement 0.069 -0.003 Competence and meaning 0.815*** 0.155*** 0.167***Recilience 0.944*** 0.097 Autonomy and control 0.663*** -0.199** -0.162***Social Capital Social trust 0.569*** 0.118*** 0.150***

Reciprocity 0.237* 0.014 Local recognition -0.210* -0.037 Social contact and support 0.786*** 0.221*** 0.234***Control variables Population density (log) 0.131*** 0.078*** 0.078***Tertiary education (log) 1.360*** -0.203** -0.212***RD expenditure (log) 0.464*** 0.302*** 0.323***

Employment rate (log) 4.413*** 0.434* 0.576***EQI index 0.263*** 0.022 Adjusted R 0.434 0.858 0.927 Dependent variable GDP lg


Interaction terms

Bridging or bonding social capital? ´Social trust´ (0.150***) X ´social

contact and support (0.234***)´ has 0.209*** effect

Education based or ”creativity” based human capital?

´Competence and meaning´ (0.167***) X ´Education rate´ (-0.212*) has a positive effect of 0.656***

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Conclusions

- ´Social trust´, ´ Social contact and support´ and ´compentence and meaning´ have robust and positive association to regional economic perfomance

- Bridging and bonding social capital are associated with high GDP in a cross-sectional analysis

- Subjective human capital (`competence and meaning´) is associated with high GDP while education based (´tertiary education`) is not


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Discussion and what next

- Enlargement to the conceptual toolbox for objective and subjective well-being comparisons

- Policies focusing on positive functioning of population might carry economic outcomes

- European Social Survey data should be utilized for regional analysis

- Time series analysis with ESS

- More exact measures for economic productivity

- Inequality rather than aggeregates


Thank you for your attention!

Weckroth, M. T. K., Kemppainen, T., & Sørensen, J. F. L. (2015). Predicting GDP of 289 NUTS Regions in Europe

with Subjective Indicators for Human and Social Capital. Regional Studies,Regional Science, 2(1), 311-330.

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